A Failed Attempt to Photograph Reality (1975) Duane Michals

"How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy.
I had confused the appearances of trees and automobiles,
and people with reality itself, and believed that
a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph
of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will
never be able to photograph it and can only fail.
I am a reflection photographing other reflections
within a reflection. To photograph reality
is to photograph nothing."

What do you think?

Livingstone, Marco - Duane Michals Through the Looking-Glass

"Mirrors, like camera lenses, reconstitute a chosen subject onto a flat surface by redirecting beams of light. How could they fail to fascinate a photographer like Duane Michals, who has spent his life mistrusting the world of appearances in order to delve into truths that lie beyond the surface, but who must do so - because of the very nature of his medium - on just such a surface?.

Unusually for a photographer, Michals has repeatedly stressed his suspicion of the purely visual to the extent even of abandoning, from time to time, the lens-based image in favour of purely verbal description. Having introduced handwritten inscriptions onto his prints in the late 1960s, in the mid-1970s he made a series of works combining texts and images and some consisting of text alone. All of these were written onto photographic paper and editioned in the same way as the pictures taken with a camera, laboriously copied out for each separately signed and numbered print, as a way of asserting that even in these purely calligraphic works he continued to identify himself as a photographer, albeit one of a very particular sort.

One of the most important of these text-only pieces, amounting almost to a statement of belief, is A Failed Attempt to Photograph Reality (1975), which consists of just four sentences in which he summarizes with wonderful economy his understanding that any attempt to photograph 'reality' can only end in failure because it is based on a confusion between experience and the transient look of things. His conclusion: "I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection" suggests a profound unease with the whole process of trying to trap appearance, a futile process which for him results in an uncertainty about his very own existence.

Another text-led work of that period, Someone Left a Message for You (1974), presents the artist's written message entirely within a sequence of four photographic images. The viewer is presented with the photographic reproduction of a piece of paper onto which a left-handed person appears to be writing a sentence backwards in mirror-writing. As used by Leonardo da Vinci on some of his annotated manuscripts, it is a technique associated with secret knowledge and private erudition. For Michals, however, the reversed handwriting, which can easily be deciphered by placing a mirror up to the surface, functions as a means of drawing the spectator into the creative act as a form of communication between the imagination of the artist and that of the intended audience. "As you read this" says the message, "I am entering your mind". In the very act of hearing oneself say these words, the process has been made complete. And it has been achieved through one of the simplest devices available to a photographer: that of flipping the negative before printing. (…)"

http://www.exitmedia.net/prueba/eng/articulo.php?id=4#

CT: Do you use only small format cameras for your fashion work and is this a conscious decision?

Juergen Teller: "I always use 35mm cameras. They are very magical for me, I think it is very close to life. With a medium-format camera, the image is flat and looks like a photograph because it becomes studied and structured. Using a 35mm camera, it feels like I have caught something out of life. It provides a way of breaking down certain barriers because I'm shy, and it helps ease down the person I'm photographing. It gives a certain rhythm and the other person has a sensation that this is not that precious or important. The interesting point is where things start and end. What is reportage photography, portrait photography or fashion photography? How can you separate photography's capacity both to trace something real - the event in front of the camera - but also to express the photographer's pre-conceived ideas and sensibility? Photography carries both real and fictional elements and I enjoy the slippage between the traditional genres of photography that this combination allows. With everything in life, we want to put things in categories. I think there aren't many photographers who are able to blur the lines. You do have a slightly different way of working with different subjects but , in a way, it is all the same. Sometimes the reason you take photographs is to find out something for yourself. You are really curious to see how something looks in a picture. I want to show what I am curious about, go into areas that I am unsure of and that are uneasy for me. The camera opens doors to places you would never get without it. As long as I have emotion, I am sure I will explore things."

Imperfect Beauty: The making of contemporary fashion photographs. Charlotte Cotton. 2000. London: V&A Publications
p.123

Paris Surréaliste

“
But why, after all, was Paris the chosen city? Was it merely the coincidence of Breton and the others being there at the right time? Or a certain tradition of iconoclasm, of historical acts of revolt? Of anti-clericism? Of architecture, eroticism, the life of the streets? All these factors played their part, no doubt, and one must be aware, in retrospect, that what happened by chance may appear to have been inevitable, but even so the city connived and in part dictated the form in which Surrealism evolved. Its femininity acted as the ideal Surrealist muse; a role the movement assigned, much to the recent indignation of some women liberationists, to ‘Woman’ in general. No other city has this quality. Most cities are masculine.
The comparative failure of London to establish itself, despite the valiant efforts of E.L.T. Mesens, as a Surrealist centre is a case in point. No doubt there were many reasons: the absence of cafés (not at all a frivolous factor, as we shall see), the British mistrust of systems of thought (‘Paul Nash’, E.L.T. said, ‘was a gentleman first, a Surrealist afterwards’), a lukewarm and short-lived commitment to group activity, a Protestant rather than Catholic culture and so on, but even so the masculinity of London remains a major factor. It is a city with compensating features (although increasingly these are being eroded), but its charms are bluff, its vices oafish. In the nineteenth century, if Dickens is to be taken as evidence, there were still eddies and backwaters where mystery swam under the dark surface, but by the ‘twenties and ‘thirties these had been drained or diverted. Protected by the Channel, we remained obstinately insular and Surrealism, when it eventually arrived over ten years after its birth, was greeted with dismissive ennui by the majority of intellectuals, as a raree show by the public, and as a useful sauce to spice up their over-cooked imagery by those artists who were at a loss as to what to serve up next. With very few exceptions, nobody prepared to face the splendours and miseries of living, or trying to live, the Surrealist life, and those who did, both then and later, came almost exclusively from the provinces.
It could be argued here, as I stressed earlier that the same was true of most of the Parisian Surrealists, but for them the French capital distilled their efforts, sustained their beliefs and took them, whether friend or foe, seriously. London never did that.
“
George Melly, Paris and the Surrealists (Honk Kong: Thames and Hudson, 1991), p.63

Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

"The city... does not tell its past , but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the bannisters of the steps,... every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."

For Ken Lum:

"The mirror is an utopia as much as it is a place without a place. In the mirror I see myself where I am not: in an unreal space which appears virtually behind the surface; I am there where I am not, a kind of shadow that endows me with my own visibility, shows me where I am absent. But the mirror sends me back to the place I am actually occupying; from the mirror I discover myself to be absent in the place where I am, as I see myself there".

frying snap

It is said that in certain parts of New York, on the tops of tall buildings belonging to corporations who transmit data between sites by micro-wave, that roosting birds are sometimes cooked by data. Television signals, computer information, text or graphics. Photographs perhaps? Killed by images.

from: Wombell, P.(ed.). (1991)Photovideo: photography in the age of the computer. London: Rivers Oram Press {p.79}

Michals on portraiture

I AM MUCH NICER THAN MY FACE AND OTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT PORTRAITURE

We spend our entire lives looking into mirrors believing the illusions reflected there and comforted by the reality of appearances. Unfortunately, people are seldom what they appear to be, and what is seen is what we expect to see. We look for reassurance not revelation. We do not know.

I knew my mother and father my entire lifetime and not once did they ever reveal themselves to me. To whom have you revealed yourself? Who shares your secrets? What do you know about yourself to tell? Who is reading this now?

For those being photographed, portraiture is essentially about vanity. We want to be told that we are in some way attractive, almost desirable, still young and of value. Anything less is disturbing. We hope for flattery. And all the time we are looking for the wrong thing. We should want clues to our own truth.

High style photographers tend to take the same portrait over and over again. It is essentially the same picture, only the face has been changed to protect the innocent. Each person should be a different solution. The photographer should approach each sitting as if he had never taken a portrait before. He should be surprised by what he has done.

Some photographers can be very presumptuous in their self delusions about “capturing” another person with their cameras. I know of one who actually believes that he reveals the soul of his sitters with his photographs of them. What you see is what there is. It is also nonsense to reduce people to just their costumes, mere social, racial, and sexual clichés. That is looking at people with the pretentions of looking into them. We never see anyone at all.

My portraits in this book have revealed nothing profound about the subjects or captured anything. They were almost all strangers to me. How could I say anything about them when I never knew them. What I did was to share a moment with them, and now I share that moment with you, no more no less.

I always look mean when photographed, yet I am much nicer than my face. I am not just this chin, these wrinkles, this nose. Do not be deceived by my face.

Bizarre looking people are very easy to photograph. All the photographer does is simply record what they bring to him. The more peculiar looking they are, the easier the job is. We all love to slow down and look at accidents on the freeway. Celebrities are the easiest of all to photograph. There is no such thing as a bad celebrity portrait. Even a bad picture is a good one. Essentially these portraits tend to be a kind of P.R. photo, puff muzak photography that is a form of celebrity packaging. One must never confuse the profound with the clever.

When someone says, “what a beautiful photograph”, upon viewing a portrait of a handsome man, what they are really saying is “what a handsome man”. Most often it is an ordinary photograph of a beautiful person. If the photograph were of an ugly person, would it then be an ugly photograph?

I prefer to photograph people in their environments. I hate studios. The things that people choose to spend their lives with gives us clues to whom they are more than their hairlines.

One day, when we have forgotten our names, the only proof that we were ever here may be hose old portraits some where in dusty albums.

As I age, while I still have time, I yearn to know now, more than ever, my true self, that random and illusive thing, decorated with personality. We believe ourselves to be this kaleidoscope of passions and distractions. We are a brilliant and unknown moment, suspended between memory and anticipation, anxious in our uncertainties, and doomed to fade with our consciousness. How can such a mystery be photographed? What is left for us but amazement?

Duane Michals

from: Michals, D. (1988). Album: the portraits of Duane Michals 1958-1988. Pasadena: Twelvetrees Press.

Et le sexe dans tout ca?

Michel Houellebecq écrit dans Plateforme (p.236):

"Offrir son corps comme un objet agréable, donner gratuitement du plaisir: voilà ce que les Occidentaux ne savent plus faire. Ils ont completement perdu le sens du don. Ils ont beau s'acharner, ils ne parviennent plus à ressentir le sexe comme naturel. Non seulement ils ont honte de leur propre corps, qui n'est pas à la hauteur des standards du porno, mais, pour les memes raisons, ils n'éprouvent plus aucune attirance pour le corps de l'autre. Il est impossible de faire l'amour sans un certain abandon, sans l'acceptation au moins temporaire d'un certain état de dépendance et de faiblesse. L'exaltation sentimentale et l'obsession sexuelle ont la meme origine, toutes deux procedent d'un oubli partiel de soi; ce n'est pas un domaine dans lequel on puisse se réaliser sans se perdre. Nous sommes devenus froids, rationnels, extremement conscients de notre existence individuelle et de nos droits; nous souhaitons avant tout éviter l'aliénation et la dépendance; en outre, nous sommes obsédés par la santé et par l'hygiene: ce ne sont vraiment pas les conditions idéales pour faire l'amour. Au point ou nous en sommes, la professionnalisation de la sexualité en Occident est devenue inéluctable."

Les sociétés occidentales sont-elles vraiment arrivées au point ou les hommes et les femmes ne savent, ne veulent plus entretenir des relations sexuelles simples et saines, quasi animales et instinctives? A un point ou l'ennui et les préjugés s'unissent pour tuer les unions charnels? C'est déprimant, mais il a en partie raison...